SoFi Blog

Jennifer Beall, Founder & CEO of Tot Squad, does not have the average startup story.  As she puts it, “Everyone else wanted to start the next Facebook, while I was working on cleaning baby poop off of car seats.”  But Jennifer, Kellogg MBA ’10 and Duke ’05, and her business are about more than just stroller and car seat cleaning/installation.   She and Tot Squad are on a mission to make moms happier, kids safer and the world a better place.

When the government lowered federal loan rates last year, we stopped lending to college students and refocused our business on refinancing graduates.  The combination of lower loan rates and guaranteed government protections made it hard for us to justify choosing a SoFi loan while in school.  Our advice was to graduate, get a job and then consider SoFi.  Over 8,500 of you have done that, refinancing over $700 million in loans with us, saving money and gaining benefits like our unemployment protection and entrepreneur program.

As a career counselor and career coach, one of the most common questions I hear from clients is how to improve a resume.  While there are plenty of tips and best practices out there, I find that a lot of job seekers get tripped up from hearing too much advice about what to include, how to format things, etc.  Clients often say to me, “Someone told me to do this, but someone else told me to do that – which one should I do?”

It’s a fair question, but it’s one that always raises a red flag for me.  Why?  Because I don’t think job candidates should spend excessive time and effort on their resumes.  And that’s exactly what all this well-meaning advice causes them to do.

When we started SoFi back in 2011, my co-founders and I felt we were on to something special.  We knew there was a problem with financial services, and we wanted to fix it.  Two-plus years and 5,000 members later, our original vision is coming to fruition.  The $80 million round we closed in April will help solidify our position as something much more than a student loan business.  We are on a path to deliver a better model for consumer finance.

There’s no question that being an entrepreneur requires you to wear a lot of hats – from product development to logistics to marketing, and everything in between.  And while most entrepreneurs will admit that they are weaker in some of these areas than others, there’s one aspect that few startups can afford to fall short on: fundraising.